Before they could go upstairs a hack from the hotel stopped at the door, and Mrs. Groody bustled cheerily in. Laura at the same time came down, saying that Mrs. Allen was asleep.
"Hannibal," said Edith, "you may sit on the stairs, and if she wakes, or makes any sound, let me know," and she took a seat near the door in order to hear.
"I've been worryin' about you every minute ever since I called, and you was too sick to see me," said Mrs. Groody, "but I've been so busy I couldn't get away. It takes an awful lot of work to get such a big house to rights, and the women cleanin', and the servants are so aggravating that I am just run off my legs lookin' after them. I don't see why people can't do what they're told, when they're told."
"I wish I were able to help you," said Edith. "Your promise of work has kept me up wonderfully. But before I half got my strength back mother became very ill, and, had it not been for Mrs. Lacey, I don't know what I should have done. It did seem as if she were sent here yesterday, for I could not have kept up another hour."
"You poor child," said Mrs. Groody, in a tone and manner overflowing with motherly kindness. "I just heard about it today from Arden, who was bringin' something up to the hotel, so I said, 'I'll drop everything to-night, and run down for a while.' So here I am, and now what can I do for you?" concluded the warm-hearted woman, whose invariable instinct was to put her sympathy into deeds.
"I told you that night," said Edith. "I think I could do a little sewing or mending even now if I had it here at home. But your kindness and remembrance do me more good than any words of mine can tell you. I thought no one would ever speak to us again," she continued in a low tone, and with rising color, "and I have had kind, helpful friends sent to me already."
Wistful mother-love shone in Mrs. Lacey's large blue eyes, but Mrs.
Groody blew her nose like a trumpet, and said:
"Not speak to you, poor child! Though I ain't on very good terms with the Lord, I ain't a Pharisee, and after what I saw of you that night, I am proud to speak to you and do anything I can for you. It does seem too bad that poor young things like you two should be so burdened. I should think you had enough before without your mother gettin' sick. I don't understand the Lord, nohow. Seems to me He might scatter His afflictions as well as His favors a little more evenly, I've thought a good deal about what you said that night, 'We're dealt with in masses,' and poor bodies like you and me, and Mrs. Lacey there, that is, 'the human atoms,' as you called 'em, are lost sight of."
Tears sprang into Edith's eyes, and she said, earnestly, "I am sorry I ever said those words. They are not true. I should grieve very much if my rash, desperate words did you harm after all your kindness to me. I have learned better since I saw you, Mrs. Groody. We are not lost sight of. It seems to me the trouble is we lose sight of Him."
"Well, well, child, I'm glad to hear you talk in that way," said Mrs. Groody, despondently. "I'm dreadfully discouraged about it all. I know I fell from grace, though, one awfully hot summer, when everything went wrong, and I got on a regular rampage, and that's the reason perhaps. A she-bear that had lost her cubs wasn't nothin' to me. But I straightened things out at the hotel, though I came mighty near bein' sick, but I never could get straight myself after it. I knowed I ought to be more patient-I knowed it all the time. But human natur is human natur, and woman natur is worse yet sometimes. And when you've got on one hand a score to two of drinkin,' quarrelsome, thievin', and abominably lazy servants to manage, and on the other two or three hundred fastidious people to please, and elegantly dressed ladies who can't manage their three or four servants at home, dawdlin' up to you every hour in the day, say in' about the same as, Mrs. Groody, everything ain't done in a minute—everything ain't just right. I'd like to know where 'tis in this jumbled-up world—not where they're housekeepers, I warrant you.